This is in India, but coming soon to a country near you (or the one you are in already).
Years ago, I read about a guy who rode his bike past a house that was being robbed. The police acquired data from Google placing him in the area at that time. While he didn’t do anything wrong and had nothing to hide, I assume he had to hire a lawyer and go through a time-consuming and stressful process to prove his innocence. That was the turning point for me where I began focusing heavily on privacy.
He is far from the only one who went through a scenario like that.
Also one thing I fucking HATE with a vengeance is how some people say ‘the process will eventually work and his/her innocent will get asserted’. That isn’t a guarantee, but even if it did… after what? Spending days or weeks in a jail cell? Being treated like a non-human criminal by guards and the system? Spending large amounts of money you won’t get back and huge amounts of stress pommelled onto you and your family (and I have heard of some people’s family getting so stressed during the process that they had heart attacks and died). Your reputation in society being crushed even if you are acquitted beyond all doubt.
And what if something goes wrong? What if the ‘system’ fails anyway and you spend years in prison writing appeals to get a second chance. Some people have spent many years, even decades, behind bars doing this, and meanwhile their accusers got to go on with their lives and 100% forgot about everything while you had to take a shit in a cell in front of another cellmate and vice versa. In the TV show Law & Order they had the smug ass prosecutor say that ‘mistakes can still be corrected’ or something to that effect when talking about a man who was wrongly convicted of a rape he had nothing to do with and spent 30 years behind bars before being acquitted.
That shit made me want to puke. You know what 30 years looks like? 30 years ago was 1995 (or almost 1996, it is December after all). If a person was wrongly accused of rape in December 1995 and they were a 20 year old trade/college student, they would be 50 years old when they are released when the truth comes out. What will life be like for them? Being told that the system ‘worked’ but basically their lives are utterly destroyed anyway.
I remember reading comments on cracked.com whenever they had an article about how the legal system is so skewed and so fucked that a user would comment with their experience as a lawyer that his sheer disgust at not only the system, but how incredibly petty people can be and how often they get away with it. Like the story of a black guy who was constantly falsely accused of stealing by an elderly white woman who even went so far as to talk to police as to how to convincingly come up with ways to put that n-word in jail. This is even though that black guy was not a thief, drug dealer, drug user, or any other such thing. He was just a guy with a simple job and living a quiet life. But she didn’t like him for racist reasons and other crap.
The result? This guy was dragged through the legal system multiple times, but was acquitted each time. In the end the court and the judges realized just what a racist bullshitter the white woman was and put a restraining order against him and dismissed all charges with prejudice, meaning they cannot be brought back up again under any circumstances.
Happy ending? Nope. The black guy lost his job, his home, his car, all his money, his wife divorced him, and when he was let go from the jail he was held him he literally only had the clothes on his back and no money and was on the other side of the state from where he lived. But hey, at least he didn’t have a criminal record… but in many places simply having an arrest record is just as bad. Exactly nothing happened to the elderly white woman who did this to him. She got to live on her life exactly as she did before.
Stories like these never leave my mind.
I feel like there should be circumstances where if you’re accused of something and found innocent, you need to be made whole. Maybe that’s a huge payout. Maybe you get all your stuff back.
If the police bring you in for questioning because you were riding your bike, and you’re shown innocent, they should pay out like $500/hour to you.
Supreme Court outlaws clothes. What criminal acts are hiding in those robs? Only the guilty would hide it
Cool. Let me install these cameras in your house, including your bedroom and bathrooms. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear
I had this conversation about privacy a week ago with a colleague. Not sure if it matters but she’s 21. She’s addicted to TikTok and was wondering why I did not use it.
I told her, I don’t trust the makers of it and don’t trust the country the app comes from (China, CCP). I half explained it was because of privacy issues. She looked me dead in the eyes and said “I don’t have anything to hide”.
So I simply said something along lines of;
“of course you don’t. The messages you sent to your boyfriend are not of intimacy things right? Certain pictures you send. Political conversations, your behavior patterns, religion. None of that matters right? Until it can be all used against you. If you care enough, I recommend to just research a couple of things up. Like for example Facebooks Cambridge scandal and Meta’s meddling with politics. Now imagine that from your own government”.
But of course, she shrugged it off and said she did not care.
But of course, she shrugged it off and said she did not care.
Getting people to care is strangely hard. I think it’s because accepting some of the things we want people to care about means grappling with how the world is unfair and fucked up, and people are emotionally just not ready for that. People are stupid cowards.
I don’t get why they never suggest making it completely public every email, phone call and bank transaction of politicians and judges then… also, please, force them to wear a chip so we can always know their location… it’s ok to give it some hours of delay for security reasons, we just need to know where you have been to, no need to worry if you have nothing to hide.
Of all the people in the world that need or should have it mandatory to have round the clock public surveillance … it should be our political leaders
They claim to be working for the people … yet the people never really know what the fuck these leaders are doing
Blowing Bubba not good enough for you?
We still don’t know who bubba is. Is he Bill Clinton? A horse? A fictional shrimp tycoon? Who knows?
Until they do. What is legal today could be illegal tomorrow.
this is key to tell the folks who think the constitution matters. they’re called “amendments” for a reason lol.
Posts like this are a great test for whether people read the article (or even the first paragraph) before commenting.
it appears decision upheld the right to privacy, even though some, perhaps dissenting, judges and prosecutor made the headline’s argument.
Hell, even the URL.
Yeah I just figure UI can factor into that a bit more, like some apps don’t show it.
The first paragraph:
As if misleading headlines are the audience’s fault.
Would this title be misleading if it was about the US Supreme Court?
And in any case the point is YES as an audience we need to make sure we know what we’re commenting on. It’s basically your one job as an audience member - think critically about what you’re reading. Otherwise you get whatever hell Facebook is.
Given that everyone’s first assumption is that it’s about the US Supreme Court, obviously no. You have to meet people where they are.
Even for domestic US news, the same shit happens for state versus federal governments. Sometimes on websites that namedrop cities and politicians but don’t bother mentioning what fucking state they’re in.
Do you honestly think that everyone outside the US sees the words “Supreme Court” in a news article title and automatically thinks its the US Supreme Court instead of the Supreme Court for their own country?
I think the majority of Lemmy users are American or expect American news to dominate. The thing you’re complaining about only happens because of that.
Supreme Court of India was sold out to the ruling party long ago.
As is a lot of other countries. It’s a growing trend that should alarm everyone.
And countries like Russia, North Korea, and China should all serve as examples of what happens when ruling parties get their way.
China is awesome, what do you mean?
So true.
I presume they’re okay with the first surveillance cameras being in their bedrooms then.
I feel like the best way to combat this is to dig up info on politicians and release it all publicly. Nothing illegal about that. If I knew how, I would.
That is a very rapey mentality
That’s India in a nutshell, unfortunately.
these things were so commonly used to outline poor thinking skills and apparently these supposedly learned men argue this. this is just the worst timeline. I remember at one point early in the millenium I was like wow. India is really getting somewhere. Unfortunately everyone seems to be going down. from the article:
“The question is can it [illegal surveillance] be done? The question here is not whether a person is ‘bothered’ or whether he has something to hide,” Mr. Mehta submitted.
The State had sought an extension of the police custody of former Telangana Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) chief T. Prabhakar Rao, who is an accused in the snooping phone-tapping case during the previous BRS government in the State.
“Now we live in an open world. Nobody is in a closed world. Nobody should be really bothered about surveillance. Why should anyone be bothered about surveillance unless they have something to hide?” Justice Nagarathna questioned.
I’d like to go to one of their houses and tell them I want to search the place. After all, they shouldn’t mind if they have nothing to hide, right?
This goes for the supreme court too, right?
If you are doing nothing wrong then you don’t need to hide your face or need guards.
